Controversial funding schemes that funnel extra money into “excellent” universities in France and Germany to boost their ranking positions seem to have paid off in terms of the volume of researchers papers produced, a new study has found.
But this extra research wasn’t more highly cited than normal, and there are concerns that these so-called excellence initiatives may have caused governments to ignore wider reforms that would have boosted all universities, not just a winning elite.
The analysis found that each €1 million in additional funding the winning universities produced an extra 22.5 research articles.